Tuesday morning tech

Here's what the tech policy conversation is swirling around on Tuesday. E-mail what you're following most at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

CAN'T-MISS NEWS
 
"HURT LOCKER" PRODUCER MOUNTS OFFENSIVE AGAINST DIGITAL PIRACY: Anyone who used BitTorrent to download a pirated copy of "The Hurt Locker," the Oscar-winning film set in Iraq, should be feeling antsy after the movie’s production company filed suit against 5,000 individuals on Monday. The move marks “one of the most direct efforts by the movie business to clamp down” on digital piracy, says the Wall Street Journal. Going after individuals is a tactic borrowed from the recording industry, which put its PR shops through the wringer while it pursued such lawsuits over the last decade. The Motion Picture Association of America made it loud and clear that it is not involved in this effort. Many industry reps, meanwhile, say the method can have a deterrent effect on piracy.

GOOGLE DITCHES WINDOWS ON SECURITY CONCERNS: Windows will no longer appear on computers at Google. Starting in January, the company began phasing out Windows after getting spooked by hackings in China, according to employees who spoke to the Financial Times. Employees need clearance at “quite senior levels” to continue using Windows, one employee said, and can now use Macs or can opt for PCs running the Linux operating system. “Windows is known for being more vulnerable to attacks by hackers and more susceptible to computer viruses than other operating systems,” the FT says. The article points out the Microsoft and Google are hot competitors, with Google leading in search and Microsoft providing the world’s most popular operating system.

NUMBER PUNCH

2 MILLION IPADS: iPad sales have topped two million in the two months since the device’s launch on April 3, Apple announced Monday. The company began selling it in nine additional countries over the weekend. CEO Steve Jobs was pleased: “Customers around the world are experiencing the magic” and “seem to be loving it as much as we do,” he said. In other Apple achievements, “iPad” is a trending topic on Twitter this morning.

MOVING ON

TELECOM STAFFER HEADS OUT: Vince Jesaitis, the legislative director for Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), will leave the Hill for the Information Technology Industry Council on June 7. Green, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, led the effort last month by 74 House Democrats to discourage the Federal Communications Commission from boosting its regulatory power over broadband providers.

TWEETED

“56 friends of mine have either dropped Facebook or dropped me as a friend in the past couple of weeks. That leaves me with 1,700 friends… Of course in that same time period 185 people have requested to be my friend, so things are OK over on Facebook. :-)” @Scobleizer, Robert Scoble, tech blogger of Microsoft-blogging fame on the emphemeral nature of online friendships.

SAID

“Meet me in Mendota. ... Come see what you bureaucrats and extreme environmentalists have done." – GOP nominee-hopeful and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina in a passionate challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). 

FOR THE WATERCOOLER 

TECH LOVE: Unemployed journalists and the serially lonely should note: A new service attempts to make online dating a little easier by paying ghostwriters to craft romantic e-mails, according to a trend piece in the Washington Post. At Virtual Dating Assistants, an Internet-dating “outsourcing company,” clients pay $600 to be guaranteed two dates a month or $1,200 to be guaranteed five dates a month. The Post calls these scribes “telemarketers who toil anonymously in pursuit of love for the lonely.” Pitfalls arise, however, when the date itself cannot ultimately be outsourced. According to the founder of one ghostwriting company, “One client … came back from a date saying that ‘we maybe made him look a little too cool online.’”